Cineplex CEO Ellis Jacob Warns Hollywood Strikes Impact Film Slate – The Hollywood Reporter

Cineplex CEO Ellis Jacob sees the ongoing actors and writers strike impacting the flow of Hollywood tentpoles into his Canadian theaters, but if there’s a resolution to the labor strife soon that disruption could be limited.  

“I don’t see a major impact. I don’t think they [studios] will move all their films away because of the strikes. This is not COVID where they’re going to shut it down,” Jacob told The Hollywood Reporter about the major studios delaying upcoming tentpole releases due to the ongoing Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA labor actions.

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He pointed to director Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife for Sony having been pushed to 2024 from a high-profile Christmas 2023 release date due to the strikes. But elsewhere on the release calendar, Jacob sees upcoming star-driven tentpoles reaching his cinemas through to the end of 2023 and into 2024 if a settlement of the ongoing strikes in Hollywood can limit the impact of product flow into his theaters.

Much will depend on the length of the strikes and when Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA negotiators can reach a new agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, representing the major studios and streamers.

“If we can get it resolved, like in the next month, I feel that we should not get major impact in any way,” Jacob reiterated.

His comments followed Hollywood’s box office recovery lifting Cineplex to sharply higher second quarter earnings and revenues.

The Canadian exhibitor, with Barbie and Oppenheimer currently playing on its screens, posted net income of $176.5 million, compared to a year-earlier $1.3 million, after its recognized $158.4 million in deferred tax assets from its Cineworld transaction to offset expected future taxable income.

Overall revenues rose 21 percent ot $423.1 million compared to $349.8 million in the second quarter of 2022, as The Super Mario Bros. Movie screened in its theaters during the second quarter. Cineplex hosted 12.8 million cinema-goers during the three months to June 30, up 15.5 percent from a year-earlier 11 million.

The exhibition giant also posted a second quarter record box office per-patron of $12.84, or 4.5 percent higher than the $12.29 in the same period of 2022 due to higher premium ticket sales during the latest quarter.